Last ramp at Delhi’s Ashram may be functional in 1st week of May

After three-and-a-half years of construction and several missed deadlines, infrastructure work at Ashram Chowk is finally expected to be completed in the first week of May, officials of Delhi’s Public Works Department (PWD) said on Tuesday, hopefully bringing an end to a long-wound spiral of diversions, roadblocks and snarls.

Work on the still under-construction ramp of the Ashram flyover extension to be used by commuters heading from Sarai Kale Khan to Lajpat Nagar – the last-leg of the long-delayed project – will be wrapped up in the next three weeks, said the officials. The deadline for the construction of this ramp, said officials, was pushed from its initial April 6 cut-off date due to delays in shifting high-voltage overhead power cables.

A senior PWD official said the agency has started working on putting up metallic towers to relocate the cables to one end of the flyover.

“Relocation work is expected to be completed by April 30. The concrete bases of the two towers are ready and the process to erect them was started on Monday. The towers need to be assembled, which will take four or five days. Both towers will be ready by April 23, following which the seven sets of high-tension wires will be shifted… The shifting process will take six-seven days, during which we will need discoms to coordinate,” said a PWD official associated with the project.

After the wires are shifted, added the official, it will take the department a few days to put in the finishing touches before the stretch can be opened for the general public, with commuters expected to be allowed to use the ramp from the first week of May.

If the fresh timelines are met, it will be the first time since December 2019 that Delhi’s busiest intersection will be free of constructions and diversions.

Authorities began tinkering with fixes for the crossing from December 2019, when PWD started construction work on an underpass along Mathura Road that was aimed at helping commuters travelling between Bhogal and New Friends Colony circumvent the intersection.

However, work on the underpass was delayed over and over again owing to a spate of reasons — lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, pollution-induced curbs during winter, as well as administrative ineptitude, all of which together pushed back an initial December 2020 deadline, with eight postponements overall. The underpass was finally opened on March 22 last year.

Overlapping with that chaos was flyover extension, work on which began in June 2020, and was supposed to end in a year. Instead, the extension took 33 months to complete, wrapping up only this March.

Even then, the ramp from Sarai Kale Khan remained incomplete, with commuters travelling from the ISBT on Ring Road towards Lajpat Nagar and parts of south and central Delhi bearing the brunt of this delay.

PWD installed metal bars at either end of the flyover to keep heavy vehicles from using the carriageways. But on March 14, HT reported that the bars were repeatedly damaged by trucks that rammed into the bar in an attempt to beat the traffic.

When the extension opened, PWD officials estimated it would take them at least a month to relocate the power lines. This deadline now stares at a month’s delay, at least.

On Tuesday, HT during a spot check found PWD employees undertaking minor works along the central carriageway under the flyover. Authorities have also opened a new U-turn, ahead of the Maharani Bagh intersection of the Eastern Avenue Road.

A Delhi traffic police officer, declining to be named, said eight personnel have been deployed to manage traffic flow in the area. “The traffic flow is largely normal, and the partial opening of the flyover has helped cut the commute time. Minor snarls and the queue of traffic from Maharani Bagh to Ashram will be resolved after the remaining part of the flyover is completed and the new loop is opened,” the officer said.

Rashid Khan, a resident of Johri Farm in Okhla, said the extension of the flyover may have provided relief to the commuters on DND Flyway, but those approaching the junction from Sarai Kale Khan side still face snarls up to Maharani Bagh. “During the rush hour, the jam begins from near the turn towards the Barapullah and extends up to Maharani Bagh. If they had finished work on the ramp along with the rest of the project, the Lajpat Nagar bound traffic would have been diverted on to the flyover,” Khan said.

Ranjeet Kumar, a commuter travelling from East Vinod Nagar towards Lajpat Nagar, said after the March 6 inauguration of the new flyover extension, congestion levels around Ashram have gone down with the removal of construction barricades at the surface level.

“The flyover has not been opened for us (commuters from Sarai Kale Khan towards Lajpat Nagar) yet. We will realise the benefits only after full operationalisation of the facility. PWD also needs to repair the surface level roads that have been badly damaged due to the movement of heavy vehicles,” Kumar said.

Dr S Velmurugan, chief scientist and head of traffic engineering and safety division at the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), said the full benefits of the Ashram extension flyover will be realised after the opening of the Sarai Kale Khan ramp, which will also help reduce the load on the Barapullah flyover as commuters will have alternative routes to take.

“The problem of the high-tension wires is a genuine one, and the relocation process requires coordination from various stakeholders. Moreover, PWD has done well to develop new back-to-back U-turns on the surface level to decongest the area,” he said.